


Black Cherry

by SQ (proteinscollide)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cousin Incest, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-05-08
Updated: 2004-05-08
Packaged: 2017-10-24 05:24:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proteinscollide/pseuds/SQ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellatrix, and her influence on Sirius years ago, unknowing and deliberate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black Cherry

Bella has her first baby at fourteen, screaming with thighs bloodied, a mess of unfinished skin and form left on the bedclothes. Sirius, forgotten in the panic of the household, sits quietly and watches - disgusted, fascinated - from a corner of the room. The smell in the air changes from dust to iron. Bella tosses and cries, and uses words that her mother turns away from with an even more pinched expression; words Sirius has only heard from behind closed doors in the servants’ quarters, late at night, and occasionally from father and his friends when they have had too much to drink. Not words for a lady, not even when she is too young to be with child, and suffering.

Eventually, the ruined linen is wrapped in a tight bundle and burnt, a sick sullied smoke haze from the yard. Sirius watches from the window, the highest point of the sprawling house, as John the head footman pokes at the fire, the last of the white cloth disappearing in excited flame. Behind him, the room empties hurriedly, maids scurrying back to normal duties, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred; Bella’s mother sweeping away without further words or comfort for her eldest child. Bella cries on a little longer, but her sobs grow soft, then muffled by the pillow, and finally there is silence. Sirius cannot help but sigh in relief. Only then does he approach her, pads over the worn unvarnished wood to the imposing bed to sit beside his cousin.

“There there,” he says helplessly after a while, Bella’s face still hidden from him in the white folds. She turns on him furiously then, eyes red rimmed, tearless, dark.

“Oh, what a comfort you are!” she snarls, mouth crooked with fury.

Sirius can see that her palms have been bloodied too, dried flakes brown on curved dents, and he slides his hand over one of hers gently, hiding the wounds from his sight.

“It’s over now,” he tries again, childish tongue stumbling over an adult platitude. She stares at him for an eternity, blank for a while, before muttering a dirty dry, “Easy for you to say.”

But she allows herself to be gathered into his embrace. On his shoulder, he feels a cold sensation, the seeping of tears through his shirt; but Bella makes no sound save a quiet wail in time. Her words are lost against him, but Sirius comes to hear them in memory; a mourning for _my baby_ , or maybe she says _my innocence_ , but he is never sure.

*

Sirius is surprised when Bella seeks him out at a gathering at her home over the summer break, past the now common group of admirers and fortune-seeking men, past jealous maiden aunts, straight for him. They haven't talked in ages, haven't sought each other at Hogwarts, and lately even greetings in the hallway are cold-tinged, perfunctory. But there she winds her way to him, flanked by his sisters, and even as Andromeda wraps him in an excited hug, Bella steps forward with one hand, gloved white, raised to cup his cheek.

"Dear boy," Bella says, reserved but with a slight mocking edge to her smile. Sirius cannot help but turn into the gesture though, mouth against the line of her covered fingers. He is dimly aware of Andromeda watching them curiously, and even less of Narcissa, polite and distant in a long lavendar dress; his eyes remain on Bella's face.

"Well, we've said our hellos, as you two wanted," Narcissa says sharply after a silent moment. Andromeda throws her a hard look, but Narcissa is already moving away determinedly, back to where their parents are talking in a knot of Blacks. Bella darts forward quickly, reaches up on her toes to whisper low in his ear.

"Have you missed me?" she asks, but she doesn't wait for the answer, follows with, "Meet me in the attic room later."

That room, the never-forgotten summer at the end of his childhood. Sirius looks up to see his uncle, her father, watching with a frown-creased brow. The same eyes following Bella always - forever drawn to his daughter before, still and too watchful after the baby that never was. Sirius shivers, and he steps away from her hurriedly, her hand falling from his skin. He opens his mouth to apologise, to retract, but she has already turned away. Her head lowered, her walk demure, lost to her father's side.

*

Sirius waits for her curiously. Bella comes long after the lamps of the house below are extinguished, winking into darkness in random pattern. She says, standing still and half-undressed at the door, "They don't use this room anymore."

Sirius turns to look at her, and she slowly makes her way to him, fingers trailing over covered furniture, a dresser, a mirror. He waits for her to bring some meaning to this meeting, so late and unexpected, and instead she sighs, "Oh Sirius, your friends - they're no good for you."

Sirius is surprised. He watches her pace steadily closer, head cocked to one side, bright eyes regarding him, hooded, demanding response.

"My friends," he repeats slowly, and she huffs and says impatiently, "Yes, those you've bonded with in your house, _whatever_ possessed them to put you there - "

"It's my choice to be there," he immediately says, "it's what I want."

She is standing in front of him, her knees just visible under the line of her slip, all she is wearing, her knees now bumping into his.

"But you're a _Black_ ," she says, amazement in her voice, as she climbs astride him in fluid movement.

His cousin is light, as light as she appears - slender body, slim lines, the edge of bones under her skin. She rests comfortably in his lap, pale legs slipping each side of him, pushing him further up the bed to be closer to him, her body aligning with his.

"Family," Sirius spits out in disgust, "you of all people should understand that family is not all it's cracked up to be."

He is lying down now, stretched along the long-abandoned sheets, the dust and crackle. Bella looms over him, her long hair falling around her shoulders. She brings her face, sharp, to his.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she says in clipped tones, every sound a lie in denial.

"Maybe not every family, but oh Bella, our family is fucked up. Right here you showed me that, in this very room, you must remember."

He grabs her wrists in angry hands. She closes her eyes, she shifts backwards; but then she looks down again and her eyes are feverish bright.

"It was just skin and cells, Sirius, nothing I couldn't survive. Blood ties, that's what binds - you need me, you need us."

The last sentence whispered against his cheek, soft lips stealing a kiss in the next breath. She shakes free of his grasp easily, and with a practised hand she gathers her long dark hair into a thick rope. It lies in her hand almost alive, and she wraps it around his neck like a luxurious, macabre scarf.

"No - I don't -" Sirius gasps as she moves lower upon him, her hips sliding further and against him. "Yes," he groans in the end as she fits herself around him, deep, deeper. Around his neck, the strands move as their bodies do - now tighter, looser, constricting again with every desperate thrust and take.

*

Sirius always thought these their last words. He walks up to her, uncowed, to rebuke her, the first time he has spoken to her since he woke alone and retching, that highest room and the cold bed. Her response is to laugh at him. There is nothing they have left in common, and she believes they have everything and more.

"You cannot mould me into a Black that way," he hisses, quiet in the bustle of the platform, the crowds of fellow students.

She laughs bitterly, and says, "I don't have to. It's in you, Sirius, you'll not be cleansed by what you pretend to believe, by your friends. You are one of us, and as tainted, deep here."

She places her hand, delicate, on the chest of his robes; in the same movement, she reaches up to bring her lips to his jaw, sliding dangerously close to the corner of his mouth. In full view of all, and Sirius stirs, almost leans into a kiss beyond cousinly, but he pulls away at the last. She can do nothing but step back almost imperceptibly at the affront, eyes flashing angrily.

"You'll see," she calls out archly, loudly, as he walks away. Behind him, her friends apprach, the whine in their voices, the grumbles about him. He walks away.

Up along the platform he sees his own friends gathered already, a messy island of luggage and boyish grins. He hurries the last strides to them, and gathers each in a fierce hug, one by one, without any words. Peter squeaks when it is his turn, knocked windless by the gesture, while James laughs and says, "We missed you too, mate."

It's a freeing phrase. Sirius feels something loosen from around him, his neck, his chest.

END


End file.
